Digital marketing is a type of marketing that uses the internet, devices with online access, websites, web content and social media platforms to market products and services to customers and increase brand awareness and loyalty. Digital marketing services take on many forms from web design, blogging and social media posting, to SEO, optimization and digital advertising.
When it comes to managing an overall digital marketing strategy or even just building and optimizing a new website, a digital marketing project manager or digital project manager is a great asset to keep the project moving forward and in scope. A digital project manager executes a wide range of skills from creating project timelines, scheduling group meetings, taking meeting notes and assigning and scheduling project tasks. They are also responsible for managing the project scope and monitoring the budget. In order to accomplish these tasks, a great digital marketing project manager will have a range of skills from digital marketing knowledge to organizational and team management skills.
Here are the top 10 skills of a great digital project manager:
Project managers manage a group of people and provide the communication that keeps the project moving forward in a positive way. They bring together the client with the team that is handling their digital marketing needs. A great digital project manager will understand the role that everyone is playing and use that information to communicate reasonable expectations and provide updates on the status of the project or ongoing work. They do this through verbal communication, visual presentations, emails and posts in project management software.
There will inevitably be some bumps that come up during the project such as a theme that isn’t cooperating or frustration about what the client wants to accomplish versus what is within the scope of the project. The project manager may also be tasked with feature testing and need to resolve issues or assign tasks to developers to fix the problem.
Today’s project managers schedule online video conferences with multiple people, share screens with clients, use project management software and upload and download files to keep the project moving. The manager should be comfortable with FTP (file transfer protocol), how to schedule and host online meetings through platforms like Zoom and use project management software such as Basecamp.
A project manager may be asked to step in and proofread/edit content for web pages or digital advertising. Basic editing and grammatical skills are helpful here. They may also be asked to go in and make some edits to a feature or section of a webpage. For this, a project manager must know how to navigate various content management systems and have a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS.
A project manager should have knowledge about the kinds of social media platforms best suited to different types of industries and the limitations of each type of platform. They should also be familiar with social media scheduling platforms such as Hootsuite and analytics platforms like Simply Measured.
A digital project manager must be able to gather and interpret data that can be explained to the client in a way that shows ROI (return on investment). Google analytics and reports provided by social media platforms are a must.
A great project manager will be able to keep the project on track by using their negotiation skills with both the internal team as well as the client. These skills are also important at the beginning of a project while contacts, rates and expectations are being set.
A project manager must be detail-oriented in order to keep track of tasks assigned to various parties and notice small errors like spelling mistakes on social media posts or broken links on web content.
A digital project manager oversees content creation from web content, to digital advertising to blog posts. All digital content should be written with SEO in mind and a project manager should be able to review content with an eye to ensuring that it is being used effectively.
A digital marketing project manager will come across as clueless if they don’t understand technology and digital marketing lingo such as SEO, SERPs, and VPN. Knowledge of commonly used lingo allows project managers to participate in the conversation and effectively communicate messages to the group.
Digital marketing services
Softwired provides digital solutions for our clients and partner agencies. We’ve got you covered for web design, SEO, local online presence and optimization, digital marketing, digital sales, and digital advertising. Whatever your business or campaign goals, know that digital marketing options are not mutually exclusive but rather need to be built upon each other. Much like a house where you start with certain foundation elements and finish with the roofing.
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